It appeared to be an inspired decision to open the 54th Cannes International Film Festival with Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge (pictured). The 9 May curtain-raiser to the world's biggest fusion of art and commerce is a brash American movie that is also a Valentine to French showbusiness.

But the evening has already thrown up a major headache. 20th Century-Fox wanted to throw an opening night bash befitting its raucous $50 million musical set in Pigalle's red-light district in the 1890s. The festival organisers, however, favoured the traditional black tie gala, complete with polite speeches, ideally to be held in an elegant marquee. The compromise: the studio is recreating Pigalle inside two interconnected circus tents. Against a backdrop of the romantic elements of Paris and the French culture, 2,000 invited guests, including the film's stars Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, can watch can-can dancers cavort while listening to music overseen by guest DJ, Fatboy Slim.

Party protocol is only one of the differences between the Cannes organisers and Hollywood, whose symbiotic and increasingly strained relationship has dominated the event in recent years. Cannes has always been a global launch pad for American movies, from All About Eve to Pulp Fiction, but soaring production costs mean the US studios are now more jittery about bringing their films to a festival where they are at the mercy of critics and discriminating audiences. On the other hand, in recent years the Cannes organisers have often been so keen to bask in the media spotlight that they have rolled out the red carpet for Hollywood's most commercial follies.

American stars may be thin on the ground this May because of the Screen Actors Guild's looming strike: many productions are currently shooting around the clock to beat the 30 June deadline. One Cannes drop-out is Jodie Foster, who was to have presided over the festival's jury until she was tapped as a last-minute replacement for Nicole Kidman, who had limped off David Fincher's The Panic Room with a knee injury. Panic-stricken Columbia Pictures could not afford to delay shooting to accommodate Foster's Cannes duties.

The fraught relationship between the sensitive artists of the old world and the marauding monsters of the new reached its nadir in 1998 when Godzilla was selected as the event's closing film. You hardly need to be a Jean-Luc Godard buff to grasp the symbolism.

Which is why Thierry Fremaux, in his first year as artistic director, is so keen to reclaim the artistic high ground Cannes has ceded inch-by-inch to rival festivals in Venice and Berlin. There is certainly a feeling of deja vu surveying this year's competition line-up, which includes a new film from 70-year-old Godard. Indeed Eloge de L'Amour is rumoured to be one of the former New Waver's strongest and most accessible works.

Joining Godard is a filmmaker of even more advanced years, 73-year-old former critic, Jacques Rivette, whose new film Va Savoir! is only his twelfth in 40 years. And he is not the oldest competitor. That honour goes to Portugal's Cannes fixture, 92-year-old Manoel de Oliveira, whose Je Rentre la Maison stars the first lady of French cinema, Catherine Deneuve, and John Malkovich.

most of the directors in competition this year are repeat visitors, such as the Coen brothers and David Lynch, whose latest works, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Straight Story, premiered at Cannes. Lynch's visceral Wild at Heart won the top prize at Cannes in 1990 and the Coens swept the board the following year with Barton Fink. Their new crime flick, The Man Who Wasn't There, starring Frances McDormand, Billy Bob Thornton and The Sopranos's James Gandolfini, is rumoured to be more offbeat than O Brother, which, despite lukewarm reviews, became their most profitable picture to date. Lynch's latest, the noirish Mulholland Drive, starring Patricia Arquette and Tim Robbins, was originally made as the pilot for a television series.

The fourth American film out of the 23 in competition is Sean Penn's police drama, The Pledge, starring Jack Nicholson and Benicio del Toro. Other American films, directed by Todd Solondz, Hal Hartley and actors Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming, are included in sections outside the main competition.

Veteran Japanese director Shohei Imamura, who controversially won the Palme d'Or in 1983 with The Ballad of Narayama and again in 1997 with Unagi is also back this year with the intriguingly titled Lukewarm Water Under a Red Bridge. So is Italy's Ermano Olmi, whose period epic, The Tree of the Wooden Clogs, walked away with the 1978 Palme d'Or. Olmi's latest is The Profession of Arms.

Also returning from Italy is Nanni Moretti with The Son's Room, and the Austrian auteur Michael Haneke is back with The Piano Teacher, starring Isabelle Huppert. Raoul Ruiz returns to close the festival with Les Ames Fortes, which screens out of competition.

Fremaux's most daring decision is to have selected DreamWorks's Shrek, the first animated film to be in competition since 1953, when Peter Pan charmed festival-goers. Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz provide the voices in the state-of-the-art film that pokes fun at Disney animations.

Cannes seems to be infatuated with Italian-Americans. Films screening outside the competition slots include Francis Coppola's extended version of Apocalypse Now (a film that originally premiered at Cannes), the debut film from his son, Roman, entitled C.Q., and Martin Scorsese's four-hour documentary, My Voyage in Italy. The Spike Jonze-produced Human Nature from pop video director Michel Gondry could even be included in this category: Jonze is married to Coppola's daughter Sofia.

Eastern Asian and Chinese-language films are not as dominant at Cannes as they were last year, but the Far East, particularly Japan, still has an impressive presence with three movies in competition. In addition to Imamura, Japan is represented by Hirokazu Kore-Eda, who found fame on the festival circuit with After Life. Kore-Eda's latest film, Distance, is about the relatives of a group of dead terrorists. Also included is Desert Moon, by last year's Cannes discovery, Shinji Aoyama, whose three-hour feature, Eureka, recently opened in the US. Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien is back with The Story of Rose, which stars Shu Qi.

twelve countries are represented in the official selection including first- timers Bosnia with No Man's Land, directed by Danis Tanovic. Ireland is represented by a three-minute short called Chicken. The most notable absentees are the Australians, which is ironic considering that Baz Luhrmann was a Cannes discovery with Strictly Ballroom in 1990, and the British.

Nobody who has sat through the largely woeful collection of British films from the last year could be surprised by the UK's omission from Cannes competition, but at least the French have decided to hold a special sympathy screening of Ken Loach's Kes. While many filmmakers have recently embraced the social realism Loach captured 30 years ago - indeed, the overriding topics of this year's Cannes films are mourning and melancholy, loneliness and violence - the British industry is hurtling in the opposite direction, churning out pale facsimiles of its rare break-out hits. These days, most British films are managing to miss out on both festival plaudits and multiples queues.

Producer Nik Powell, who has had several films screened at Cannes over the years, including Mona Lisa, Neon Bible and Scandal, is more generous in his assessment: 'There are two reasons why there are no British films this year. First, most of our Cannes directors have not made films that are ready. And second, many more filmmaking territories have recently opened up and Cannes has not extended the size of the event to reflect this. For example, a few years ago, there were hardly any Asian films at Cannes.'

More significantly, though, in the last year there have been seismic shifts in the marketplace to the extent that what may initially look like a predictable and esoteric line-up of blink-and-you'll-miss-them festival films is in fact the real vanguard of commercialism. Several titles in last year's Cannes line-up seemed alien to the public but ended up as money-spinners while dozens of more recognisable studio films crashed and burned. Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon hauled in more than $100m in pure profit - even more than Pulp Fiction - while Dancer in the Dark, In the Mood For Love, Yi Yi and O Brother all catapulted their directors into the bankability league. And let's not forget that Billy Elliot took his first steps at Cannes last year. Already there is industry buzz surrounding the film Tears of the Black Tiger, which may bring the Thai western genre to a cinema near you soon.

Look at what three of the directors who had films shown at Cannes last year are up to. Nurse Betty director Neil LaBute has just wrapped Possession, starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Requiem for a Dream director Darren Aronofsky is attached to direct the next Batman movie. And Ang Lee has signed up to direct The Incredible Hulk. By pre-empting the mainstream, Cannes is blurring the line between art and commerce more than ever. Let the party begin.

 The 54th Cannes Film Festival runs 9-20 May

Festival form past and present

The Favourites Eloge De L'AmourDirector Jean-Luc Godard has the sentimental vote and his new film is eagerly anticipated.Mulholland DriveCulled from his aborted TV series, David Lynch's latest is another slice of dark surrealism.Moulin RougeBaz Luhrmann's lavish musical could enchant the jury.

About this article

The French are coming

This article appeared in the Observer
on Saturday 28 April 2001.
It was published on
the Guardian website
at 07.34 EDT on Sunday 29 April 2001.
It was last modified at 07.34 EDT on Wednesday 2 May 2001.
It was first published at 07.34 EDT on Wednesday 2 May 2001.